Whether you’re a beginner or trying out a new art application, animating can be a daunting task especially when you see so much buttons and tools on your workspace. It can get pretty overwhelming quite quickly.
Which is why when I learned Clip Studio Paint Ex for smartphone and tablet allows you to work on a simple and a very straightforward workspace, I checked it out and tried it myself!
It surprised me how a simple workspace really packed a lot of features enough that I was able to make a simple character animation under an hour so I wanted to share my step-by-step animation process of my little character, Rin!
On that note, let’s get started.
Let’s animate a character using Clip Studio Paint’s Simple Mode! ✨
🎞 Shorts Video (Duration: 60 seconds)
🔁 Switching from Studio Mode to Simple Mode (2 Ways)
The Clip Studio Paint app on the tablet opens on Studio Mode UI as default.
You have to switch to Simple Mode first to be able to access that UI and here’s two (2) ways on how to switch modes:
Clip Studio Paint Menu Bar Logo
You can click the Clip Studio Paint logo on the top left corner of the menu bar and select “Switch to Simple Mode”.
Mode Switch Button
Found on the bottom left corner of your tablet screen, you can click the Mode Switch button to switch to Simple mode in one click.
💻 The Simple Mode UI
It’s good to familiarize yourself with all the components of the app first since this could give you ideas on what outputs could possibly be made with it and this can effectively streamline your art process more since you know where everything is and how every single tool works.
So here’s a short guide on the Simple Mode workspace:
Tool Palette
The Tool Palette includes the essential basic tools like the brushes, eraser, lasso, fill tool, etc. as well as the color palette & color wheel. Everything you need to make a simple character animation!
All default brushes are readily available when you switch from Studio Mode to Simple Mode, however your downloaded brushes from Studio Mode still needs to be added to Simple Mode.
Here I imported my most used brushes for line art and sketching! It’s an essential for me since my character has always had textured line art and it really allows you to give more depth to your character.
To import your downloaded brushes from Studio Mode, on the Brushes tab you have to click the plus sign (+) and select “Import from Studio Mode”.
brushes I used for this project:
Animation Timeline & Layer Palette
The Animation Timeline & Layer Palette are the most important parts of our animation process. They work hand in hand in making our drawings move.
The Animation Timeline holds all the frames that makes up the whole animation. It allows you to view the playback, add, edit, duplicate and delete frames and also enable the onion skin if needed.
It’s important to note that each frame on the Animation Timeline has their own set of layers that can be found on the Layer Palette. This is very useful for when your animation is colored or you have multiple drawings/elements per frame.
The Layer Palette works the same way as the layer panel in Studio Mode. It allows you to enable alpha lock, add clipping masks, switch between blending modes and merge your layers . You can also group layers and edit its opacity.
🎨 Simple Character Animation Process
Now you’re familiarized with the Simple Mode interface, it’s time to get started with our Simple Character Animation!
You can also follow along this guide while watching the shorts video linked above.
Sketch
Sketches are optional but for me it’s the most essential part of my animation process since this is where I start making sense of the poses and the progression of the animation without stressing over clean lines.
1. Draw your Main Pose
For this animation, I started drawing the last frame first since it’s the main pose of the whole animation and the other key poses will be based on it.
You can start drawing whichever frame you like but for me it just saves time since it’s much easier to draw and tweak the rest of the frames now that you have established a solid reference frame.
2. Continue drawing the rest of the key poses and in-betweens
When you’re done drawing your main pose, you can now start drawing the next key pose.
Add another frame by clicking the plus sign (+) on the right side of the animation timeline. Enable onion skin through the ellipses (…) so you can see your previous frame.
Continue until you’ve sketched out all your planned poses for the whole animation.
3. View the playback
Click on the play button on the animation timeline to watch your animation playback. Once you’re satisfied with the poses, you can now do line art and coloring!
Line Art & Coloring
1. Manage your layers per frame
Depending on the contents and style of your animation, there would be times that you would need to work with multiple layers per frame especially for ones with colors and multiple elements or objects. This will save you a lot of time since all the elements on each frame will be separated and editable on their respective layers.
Select the frame first on the animation timeline, and on the right side click the plus sign (+) to add a layer. Do this for all the frames that needs editing, adding or deleting.
You can also rename your layers accordingly, just double tap the layer you want to rename.
2. Line art & Color time!
Now you can start doing line art and coloring! Make sure to add separate layers for your line art and colors.
Spacing & Timing
Now that everything is colored we can do spacing and timing, right now the playback is playing your animation frame by frame which looks a little choppy. It is important to note that frame by frame at 12 frames per second is Simple Mode’s default and cannot be edited.
To have a smoother animation you have to space them out by duplicating each frame on the animation timeline.
Click on your desired frame and select “Duplicate” and repeat this to all necessary frames.
I usually do it by 2 frames per pose and extend some out by 4’s or 6’s depending on the movement. This is where your basic animation principles comes in so you may time it depending on the result you want to achieve. For this animation I’m mainly using squash and stretch for the transition from the first frame to the final frame so applying 2 frames per pose gives it enough time for the eye to catch it, 1 frame each for the squash and stretch allows for smooth transition from the previous key poses to the final & main pose and 6 frames for the main pose allows it to show the pose for longer.
Exporting your animation (Saving & Sharing)
And we’re done! Now you can export your animation and save it or share it to your hearts content!
📝 Conclusion
The world of animation has evolved so quickly in the digital age as well as other artforms.
It can be scary at first to try new things out of your comfort zone but sometimes going out of your way to learn something new like using a whole new art application can influence a big change in how you see and make your art. For one, it can propel your skill improvement in ways you never expected before and it can also make you discover more about your art process, what to add, change or continue doing with it.
Never be scared to try out new things and it doesn’t always have to be difficult. Sometimes there’s apps like Clip Studio Paint that can make it easy and simple!
Thank you so much for reading through my tutorial and watching the shorts video for it . This is where it ends and I hope you learned something valuable from it~
See you next time! 🌟
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